Classical pianist tells why he still drives the first car he ever owned

Star and Car: Simon Tedeschi

Classical pianist tells why he still drives the first car he ever owned

Star and Car: Simon Tedeschi

22 Jan 2016Owen Thomson

What was your first car?

My first car is still the car that I have. It's a 2003 Mitsubishi Magna Executive. I think they call it a TJ Executive, if I'm not mistaken. It has been a trusty workhorse, especially in regional touring situations, for close to five or six years now.

Yeah but it's not executive. It's less executive and more cumbersome. It's a big beast. I had absolutely no idea about cars. I still don't. I don't even know how they work. I have no idea.

How did you end up with the Magna?

I got my stepfather to go to a car dealership and he found it. The instructions he had were that it's got to be economical, it's got to be tough, and it's got to be able to fit lots of CDs in it. It had about 107,000-kilometres on the odometer, and I've basically thrashed the s..t out of it and it's still going strong.

Any distinguishing characteristics?

It has the worst turning circle you've ever seen in any vehicle anywhere. It reminds me of the Austin Powers movie where he has to do a 300-point turn in this buggy to go back where he came from. It's hilarious. That's what my car is like.

What's been your most interesting or favourite drive?

Interesting but not necessarily special, I drove out to a really small town near Mudgee and there was a huge dead male kangaroo on the road, which I ran over again, and the smell, the waft of this kangaroo corpse just made itself felt throughout the car for the remainder of the trip. It was absolutely disastrous, so I had to deliberately drive off-road on some grass in order to get the smell out of the car. In terms of enjoyable, I regularly drive up to Bowraville on the mid-north coast of NSW, because that's where my mother lives.

What type of driving do you like the most?

I'm very good at driving in the city, but I actually get very nervous driving in the country because I don't know what to do with myself with those long winding roads. It's almost like I need some kind of obstacle. In the city I'm like a man possessed. It's not unlike piano playing in that a lot of the movements are instantaneous and totally autonomic. You're not thinking about them and you're just sort of reacting on a very primitive level.

The lowdown: the internationally renowned classical pianist says there are definite similarities between performing and inner-city commuting.

Career highlights: performing a Mozart Piano Concerto at the Sydney Opera House at age 9; giving a private recital to iconic Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at age 13; performing for dignitaries including Vladimir Putin, George W Bush and Nelson Mandela; recording the album Gershwin and Me (Universal/ABC) in 2013, with the album going to number 1 on the classical music charts for two-weeks.